This invention relates to gathering device discovery information.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (“IEEE”) standard 1394–1395 (published Jun. 16, 1995) defines a high-speed serial bus (“1394 bus”) that can transfer data among consumer electronic devices, personal computers (“PCs”), and peripheral devices such as monitors, keyboards, printers, scanners.
When devices are added to and removed from an active 1394 bus, the bus will automatically reconfigure itself to accommodate the changes. To facilitate reconfiguration (and other interactions among the devices), each device stores discovery information comprised of a unique identifier and information identifying services available from the device. The information is useful to other devices in making use of the services.